It is very difficult to use traditional, straight knitting needles for hand knitting a small circumference ring for any item such as the top of a knitted hat, glove fingers, sock toes, the bottom of a knitted bag or other such items. An established Art of knitting circular items involves what is commonly known as “circular needles”—an assembly of two knitting needles connected by a flexible cord. The needles themselves are straight, not circular. The needle shafts may be affixed permanently to the cord or they may be removable to allow attachment to cords of different lengths. Circular needles are usually effective in knitting circles greater than 9 inches in diameter. When a circle is smaller than approximately 9 inches, the shafts of the needles are too long and rigid to knit the stitches on the opposing needle.
Some manufacturers of knitting needles make circular needles that have very short shafts and tips, but those are very difficult to handle because the shafts are too short to grip properly, especially by knitters of limited dexterity due to arthritis or other such conditions, and there is still a threshold of circumference below which even these short shafts cannot knit. To resolve this problem most knitters use multiple, double-pointed straight needles arranged in a square or a triangle configuration to handle such small circumference pieces. This arrangement, however, is very unstable and tends to come apart easily. Extensive practice and dexterity are required to use this method of knitting. The method of using multiple double pointed needles to knit small circumference items is disposed to dropping stitches between the needles and to stretching out the stitches beyond their intended size, creating an undesirable effect commonly known as “laddering”.
Some knitters use a method commonly called the “magic loop” in which a long circular needle—an arrangement of two knitting needles connected by a flexible cord at least 30 inches in length—is used to manipulate the stitches in the small circumference piece of knitting. This technique also requires significant practice and dexterity to use and can stretch the knitted stitches beyond their intended size. As a result, many hand knitters never attempt to knit items that require knitting small-circumference rounds.